Naples' Most Curious Kitchen
Mario Avallone has been thinking seriously about food and wine in Naples since before it was fashionable to do so. When he opened the first iteration of La Stanza del Gusto in 1996 — a single room, a single table, twelve seats — the idea of treating Campanian ingredients with the same rigour that northern Italian or French kitchens applied to theirs was not yet a given. Avallone made it his position, and held it, and the restaurant has been operating on that frequency ever since: intelligent, ingredient-driven, never showy, occasionally startling.
The current premises on Via Costantinopoli, near Piazza Bellini in the historical centre, occupy three levels. At street level: Squisitezze, the cheese bar and osteria, where Avallone's passion for producer-direct cheese — largely Italian, thoughtfully selected, served with the accompaniments they deserve — operates as a more informal expression of the same sensibility. Above: the upstairs restaurant, with its vaulted ceiling and the intimate scale that never allowed more than thirty covers even when expansion was possible. Below: the wine cellar, which explains why the list upstairs reads like the work of someone who has been spending serious money in serious places for thirty years.
The cooking is creative Italian in the most defensible sense of that phrase: it starts with Campanian produce of genuine quality — the cheeses of the area around Caserta, the olive oils of the Cilento, the seafood of the bay — and applies technique and curiosity without losing the ingredient as the point. A salt cod tempura with papaccelle (Neapolitan pickled peppers) is the kind of dish that sounds like a trick and arrives as a revelation. A tagine of lamb that uses spicing from Naples' historic Moorish influences reassembles what you thought you knew about the city's cuisine.
The wine list deserves particular attention. Organised by producer philosophy rather than region, it covers Campanian natural wines — the Falanghinas of the Campi Flegrei, the Aglianiicos of the Taurasi zone — alongside Italian producers of consequence and a selection from further afield chosen with discrimination rather than status. Avallone has been collecting relationships with winemakers for thirty years. The result shows.
Best Occasion Fit: First Date
The upstairs restaurant at La Stanza del Gusto, with its vaulted ceiling and no more than thirty covers, provides the intimate scale and the low ambient noise that conversation requires. The menu offers enough to talk about — the sourcing, the wine programme, the way Avallone thinks about Campanian food — without demanding expertise to engage with it. Order the cheese course from Squisitezze to begin and let the sommelier guide the wine. The first date at La Stanza is a first date with a point of view, which is the only kind worth having.
Best Occasion Fit: Close a Deal
Business dinner in Naples rarely requires the maximalist approach available at the fine dining level. La Stanza del Gusto occupies a more useful middle ground: serious enough in its food and wine to signal genuine taste and knowledge, intimate enough that conversation carries without effort, and removed from the tourist circuit that renders some of the city's more celebrated addresses unsuitable for genuine discussion. The private atmosphere of the upstairs room — you are unlikely to encounter anyone you know, which is sometimes what a deal requires — makes it a reliable choice for meetings that need to reach conclusions.